The prior post in this series ended with the cases of the five Bullers who participated in the first (5 June 1917) registration of potential draftees all resolved: three of the men had been called up to serve, and two had been exempted. This leaves ten additional Bullers in York County who registered during one of the later registrations in 1918.
As we noted earlier (see here), the first registration was for men ages twenty-one to thirty-one. Several registrations followed. Exactly one year after the initial registration, on 5 June 1918, all males who had turned twenty-one since the first registration were required to register; two and a half months later, on 24 August 1918, anyone who had turned twenty-one during the short interim also had to register. Finally, the registration pool was expanded significantly to include all men ages eighteen to forty-five; a final registration to collect information on these men took place on 12 September 1918.
Nine of the ten remaining Bullers participated in this final registration. Only Benjamin P Buller, son of Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller, registered on an earlier date, on 24 August 1918. We see in a snippet from the 29 August 1918 York Republican (p. 1) that Benjamin was one of twenty-four registrants that day.
Before we explore what happened to Benjamin and to the other nine Buller registrants, it is important to recall that World War I was about to end: the Armistice that ended the conflict was signed at 11:00 a.m. on 11 November 1918, less than two months after the final registration. The fact that the war ended so soon after that last registration is significant for what we discover—and do not discover—about this group of ten Bullers.
Of this group of ten, only Benjamin P Buller (son of Peter P) was drafted. In fact, he was called up in the same group of 102 men as Henry B. Buller, who was part of the first registration (see “Called to Colors” quoted here). Benjamin and the other inductees reported to boot camp in California in late October but, given the end of the war two weeks later, never were shipped overseas or saw action. In fact, a later newspaper account states that the October 1918 contingent was “ready to serve but relieved from duty by signing of the armistice” (York Republican, 12 December 1918, p. 2).
Beyond Benjamin, we find only two other of these ten Buller registrants mentioned in contemporary newspaper accounts (York Republican, 10 October 1918, p. 5). Henry F. Buller (part of the second family discussed here) was assigned to class 4. We cannot say for certain, but the fact his wife and two child depended on him for support probably led to this classification.
Jacob P (J. P.) Buller was also assigned to class 4. J. P. was single and had no children, but you may recall that his draft registration card listed his employment as being “with [his] aged mother.” I assume that he made a similar comment on his questionnaire and that the local draft board took this to mean that his mother (Sarah Siebert Buller) was dependent on him for support. Although we do not have direct evidence that this was the case, it is a logical explanation of what we do know.
None of the other Bullers who registered on 12 September 1918 is mentioned. (George Buller, you may recall, was institutionalized in the Ingleside State Hospital near Hastings, Nebraska.) Presumably the war ended before their registrations and questionnaires were fully processed.
In the end, the 12 December 1918 York Republican (p. 2) list of all the men of York County who served in the war includes the names of four Bullers: Andrew, Frank D., Benjamin P, and Henry B. In reality, only Frank D. may have seen action, since he was called up in May 1918. Presumably the other three never made it out of the sixteen-week-long boot camp before the war ended, leaving them to return home and resume their private lives.
In all, the 12 December 1918 newspaper account mentioned above lists 668 men from York County who actually served in World War I. This does not include the 102 who were called up but never served. The U.S. government estimates that the entire population of York County was 17,114 in 1917 (here), which means that nearly 4 percent of the entire population of York County served in the World War I armed forces. What more can we say about these numbers?
The male-female split in Nebraska was 51.9 to 48.1 percent in 1920 (for all data in this section, see here). Using this figure, we can estimate that there were 8,882 males in York County in 1917. We know further that 38 percent of the male population in York County was between the ages of twenty and forty-four, which includes the age range of the men being called up. Given that the first and second registrations included only men ages twenty-one to thirty-one (no one was called into service from the third registration, which had the broader age range), we might reasonably reduce this 38 percent by half (since the age range twenty to forty-four is more than twice the range twenty-one to thirty-one), to 19 percent. Based on these figures, we can estimate the likely population of draft-eligible men in York County to have been around 1,688 (i.e., 8,882 x .19).
Why is this number important? It shows us that 40 percent (668/1,688) of the draft-eligible men in York County left their homes and jobs to serve in the armed forces. That is a high percentage that certainly created labor shortages for those managing the county’s farms and businesses. Fortunately, most of the men called into service returned home: only sixteen casualties are listed for York County (2.4 percent of the number who served). Curiously, more died of disease than were killed in action (nine to seven).
One final note: in spite of the government’s provision for a religious exemption, some Mennonites were called to serve. Within the list of 668 York County soldiers I see, in addition to the two Bullers, one Epp, two Franzes, one Friesen, one Hiebert, one Penner, and four Peters. We cannot say that all these persons were members of a Mennonite church, nor do we know at this time how many Mennonite men actually registered, but we can reasonably conclude that the religious exemption was applied unevenly and thus sent some men off to war against their will and their religious commitments.
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